Your Dues = Their Power

The National Level Paradigm

Many of us belong to national-level professional organizations, such as National Rifle Association (NRA) and National Education Association (NEA) just to name a few. Over the last several years, members have begun to feel increasingly disenfranchised by these groups.

While at a gun show about 6 weeks ago, many attendees were making comments about how the NRA had been doing the most to hurt gun owners rather than further their cause. Some had already left the organization. Others stayed because everything at the local chapter seemed just fine and they seemed unaware of the result of the actions taken by the national level organization.

At the National Education Association’s (NEA) annual convention, the retiring General Counsel Bob Chanin said, “We are not paranoid, someone is really after us. Why are these conservative and right-wing b****rds picking on NEA and its affiliates? I will tell you why: its the price we pay for success.” Chanin continued with what made his group effective was, “not because of our creative ideas, it is not because of the merit of our positions, it is not because we care about children, and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power. And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues each year.”

According to columnist Peter Heck, “At this same convention in San Diego, the NEA voted to throw their full support behind homosexual “marriage” by committing to use its resources and political muscle to take down any legislation that hinders the homosexual movement.”

One should ask if the general membership were allowed to vote, would they have pursued this same goal? Would teachers everywhere not have had more pressing issues for them to address? And what would make an organization dedicated to the quality of education decide to back such a single-issue agenda that might disrupt the real purpose of the classroom content? Your answer might be that they were “buying” their own political favor with the members’ dollars. Perhaps the national association board members would be receiving invitations to circles of powerful people that wanted this agenda furthered in the schools. And with this vote from the delegates to the annual convention, they were able to solidify their own personal powerbases in Washington leaving the teachers in schools with nothing but more friction for the curriculum initiatives that would surely result.

Regardless of the issue, it was not one directly related in anyway to the organization’s need to address education. How can national organizations be taken so far off point? Through corruption at the highest levels. If you are feeding a national-level monster with your membership dollars, STOP RIGHT NOW!

It is time to put your money into organizations committed to doing nothing TODAY in your community. Those lobbyists in Washington never see YOUR face, but are paying for FACE TIME with the powerful with YOUR MEMBERSHIP DUES. The only way to break the back of a corrupt central government is to decentralize all our efforts. LOCAL initiatives, LOCAL organization, LOCAL spending of money, LOCAL EVERYTHING!!

If the last Reformation was about getting rid of the Priests as intercessors between the people and God; let this reformation be about getting rid of the political intercessors–the Lobbyists and the Lawyers!!